You finished your sandwich, you’re wiping your hands on your napkin and you reach to start munching on your plate…
This is perhaps not the new order of events at lunchtime in the Snack Bar, but it could be. The new Carleton Composts program on campus is changing the way students and staff think about their trash. A collaboration between Facilities and Dining Services, the program is turning overflowing garbage cans into organic matter treasure chests. What used to receive trash in the Snack Bar are now receptacles for compost, and yellow bins for compost can be found throughout the dining halls. So, where did this new system come from?
Facilities and Dining Services had been discussing the possibility of a composting program for several years, inspired in great part by the enthusiasm of many students on campus. After evaluating the options of doing entirely on-site composting or contracting an outside company, they decided on the latter. Based on the sheer volume of compost generated on campus, it seemed difficult, if not impossible, to find space to compost such quantity on-site. As Rob Lamppa, Director of Energy Management, said, “We’ll have the [compost] experts do what they do best.”
A contract was made with Resource Recovery Technologies (RRT) of Bloomington, Minnesota, the largest processor of organic materials in the Midwest. Carleton is the first college in Minnesota to contract with RRT and implement such an ambitious, wide-ranging compost program. Waste Management transports Carleton’s compost to one of RRT’s facilities where it is inspected, mixed with yard waste, ground, cured and finally analyzed by an independent laboratory to ensure that it meets the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s requirements. At this juncture, after 3-12 months of curing, the compost is used in gardens, as fill when planting trees and shrubs, and on golf courses and playing fields.
Currently, compost receptacles can be found in both Dining Halls and in the Snack Bar, and Sodexho is composting behind the scenes in the kitchens as well. In the winter, receptacles will be available in all of the dorms as well. The new Sustainability Assistants are working with Houses to get composting going even in the campus periphery.
An exciting feature of the new composting program is that we are not just diverting food waste from the waste stream, but products that would have once landed in the trash are now compostable. All of the sandwich packaging, salad containers, napkins, coffee cups and drink cups at the Snack Bar are now biodegradable, and these products are used at all campus picnics and events from here on out. These earth-friendly containers do not come without a cost—they they are actually 15-40% more expensive than conventional packaging, but Dining Services committed to the new composting program and excited about making it as successful as possible. Dining Services General Manager Joe Winegardner highlighted the significance of the breadth of the program, noting, “When one sees what is being accomplished now compared to what the program may have been just last year, one can quite easily discern that Carleton and Sodexho have made a major commitment to the composting program.”
Because the program is so new, exact data about how much trash Carleton is composting, and therefore diverting from a landfill, is unavailable, but it seems that it will only continue to increase as yellow compost bins become more widely available on campus and as the Carleton community just simply gets used to using the system. The compost facility can handle up to 30% contamination of the compost (plastic bags, aluminum cans, wax-coated boxes and other non-compostables) but the smaller percentage, the better, as the material can be composted more efficiently.